Suddenly overtaken by the fear she had changed more last night, Athena rushes to the bathroom mirror for a look at herself. Her naked figure was thankfully the same one she remembered seeing last night, but Athena couldn't find too much comfort there; Athena knew all too well that most of the damage was happening in her own head, and you couldn't see that in a mirror.
Straightaway, then, she grabs some paper to scribble on and a pen from her school bag, and forces herself to write down everything important she could remember about her current identity. Miss Fine couldn't change that, she reasoned, and hopefully the reminder would help her resist the Councillor's influence:
I am Athena DeVries
I am 16 years old
I am a Goth girl
Magic and the occult are real, I know and practice both
I am single
I...
Her hands started to shake; something about the next few seemed wrong, somehow, but she had to force herself to resist that feeling and write anyway:
I am not a maid
I am independent and prefer no company or authority.
What people think about me does not matter.
My clothing choice does not define me.
Satisfied at her new mantra, Athena folded up the paper, put it in her bag and away, and returned to the bathroom to finish her shower, with a fresh set of underwear to change into. Shortly, she had washed up and changed and gone through the day's hygienics, and left her room in nothing but her underwear to get some breakfast, and start on those chores. The itch to get them done still need scratching, as much as she might resent it.
"Athena, what are you wearing, young lady!?" Her mother demanded when she saw her daughter starting to clean in nothing but underwear.
"Oh, uh, Mom! I was just... uh..."
"Don't make excuses for yourself, missy! Get dressed appropriately to do your chores!"
"Y-Yes ma'am..." Athena slinked back to her room obediently, picking up that discarded "old maid" outfit and hesitating. She shouldn't... She knew she shouldn't, she knew it would just get worse if she put it on, but something in her couldn't stand being scolded like that again. It wasn't who she was just to obey before! But now...
